


you could call this the funeral

by mullethyuck



Series: love is dead [3]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Airports, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Backstory, Chaos, Gen, Major Character Undeath, Mild Blood, Mild Gore, Minor Violence, Pre-Apocalypse, alternately titled: yukhei be goin thru it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2019-11-12
Packaged: 2021-01-29 06:26:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21405664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mullethyuck/pseuds/mullethyuck
Summary: The apocalypse starts just like any other Tuesday.
Series: love is dead [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1536871
Comments: 1
Kudos: 24





	you could call this the funeral

**Author's Note:**

> i'm not gonna lie to y'all i just kind of word vomited this in a couple hours bc i had plans to go to the superm concert in fort worth and then changed my mind bc i'm a FOOL so naturally i got sad that i missed my bby yukhei and wrote this to distract myself (plus i gave you jaemin's origin story so it's only fair yukhei gets one too!!)
> 
> pls show [steph](https://twitter.com/scoups_of_heony) some love for encouraging me to write this next and also being my hype man ily <3
> 
> also the title is a whole [mood](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9AAD-3Xpds)

The apocalypse starts just like any other Tuesday.

Well okay, not _ any _other Tuesday, because Yukhei is currently fidgeting in an uncomfortable plane seat waiting to land in Seoul so he can move into his dorm before he starts school in a couple weeks. But other than that, yeah, it’s a lame ass Tuesday.

The pilot is saying they’ll land in ten minutes, which is really good news because at this point Yukhei can’t even feel his legs. He’s never been a huge fan of flying for just that reason - planes are not built for people his size. He’s lucky he got an aisle seat, or he’d really be fucked. (He did accidentally trip two people with his legs over the course of the flight, and clotheslined a kid once while he was stretching, but overall the aisle seat is still the best option.)

Sometimes he wonders why he’s subjecting himself to this, but then he remembers that he’s an international relations major, this will look good for grad school since he’s actually getting out of his home country, etc etc. All that stuff his advisors told him when he was applying to schools, and for some reason he actually listened to them. He’s always been curious about the world though, and the people in it (hence the major), so maybe he’s just using this as an excuse to get out there. It sure beats taking over the family restaurant like his dad wanted him to. Not that there’s any tension about that - his parents have been nothing but supportive of his dreams. He’s lucky to have them. He’s gonna miss them a lot. Fuck.

They land what can’t possibly be ten minutes later - ten _ hours, _ maybe - and Yukhei is this close to sprinting off the plane before anyone else can exit just because he’s so stir crazy. He has trouble staying still for long periods of time, and even though the flight was barely four hours that’s still way longer than he would ever stop moving under normal circumstances. It’s part of why he works out so much; the constant motion is calming, in a weird way. It keeps him alert, grounded.

He’s a polite, civilized person though, so he waits his turn to follow everyone else out the door of the plane and down to the terminal. He’s thankful for his long legs as he makes his way to passport control, since he manages to pass a number of people on the way and cut his wait time down a considerable amount. After a remarkably brief wait in line, he answers the usual barrage of questions about who he is and why he’s here, and heads to the baggage claim so he can move on with his life.

The baggage claim, as always, is agonizingly slow. He stands there, staring blankly at the same neon pink bag that’s passed by at least seven times now, and he can actually feel his eyes glazing over. He doesn’t want to be that guy, but damn he wishes they would hurry up and unload the bags from his flight. He doesn’t mind airports, but he doesn’t like them either, and he really needs to start unpacking tonight. He has a lot of shit.

He decides to call his mom now rather than when he gets to his dorm, because it’ll give him something to do while he waits and he’s certain she knows he’s landed anyway because she studies the flight status like her life depends on it whenever he travels. She’s protective, even from 2000 kilometers away. He loves her for it.

“Xuxi?” she says when she picks up, like anyone else would be calling her from his phone.

“Hey, Ma,” he says in return, squinting at the pink bag as it completes another lap around the conveyor belt. “I just wanted to let you know I made it here in one piece, plane didn’t crash or anything.”

“Oh, good!” She actually sounds relieved at that, which is only a little weird. Was she expecting something else? “How’s Seoul?”

Yukhei keeps eyeing that fucking bag. “The baggage claim is lovely this time of year.” His mom clicks her tongue on the other end of the line. “What? I haven’t even left the airport yet, so I don’t know. I just wanted to let you know I was safe.”

“I know baby, I’m glad you called when you did.” Yukhei doesn’t know what to do with that, but his mom doesn’t give him a chance to reply anyway. “Go get your bags, and text me when you get settled!”

“Okay. Love you, Ma.”

“Love you too, Xuxi. Be safe!”

He hangs up, and something about the way his mom was acting is throwing him off. Everything she said was normal, but the way she said it has him on edge for no apparent reason. He hopes it’s just his nerves getting the best of him. He’ll calm down once he gets out of here and makes it to his empty dorm room. Having his own space is gonna be so nice.

After eons of waiting, his suitcase _ finally _appears. He grabs it quickly, making his way toward the exit. When he gets out to the lobby, he sits on a random bench and lazily rolls his suitcase back and forth with his foot while he opens up a cab calling app and tries to get a ride. The closest one is twenty minutes away, which is annoying, but the only other car he sees on the little map is 45 minutes away and he really hopes that isn’t the norm here. He hates public transportation.

He grabs a snack from a nearby vending machine while he waits, because it’s been like seven hours since he ate and his body is rioting. A tiny pack of chips doesn’t help all that much, but it’s enough to hold him over till the cab gets here so he can find his new home. Except he looks down after popping the last chip into his mouth, and sees the ride has been cancelled. Perfect.

He checks the app again, but this time the map is totally empty. No available drivers at all. Which is decidedly weird for a city of this size; hell, in Hong Kong there’s a cab on every street. Yukhei wonders if the app is glitching; he refreshes it and sighs when nothing has changed. He’s just gonna have to hail a cab the old fashioned way, apparently. Or maybe just take the train, though he really would hate to drag his suitcase all the way over to the station.

He throws the chip bag away, rolling his suitcase behind him as he makes his way toward the outside world. It’s kind of eerie how quiet the airport is now, he realizes. The lobby seems almost deserted, but that definitely wasn’t the case just twenty minutes ago. Everyone must have filed out while he was distracted with his phone. Is that why all the cabs are unavailable? That seems like a stretch, but he doesn’t think about it too much. He has shit to do, and leaving this damn airport is first on the list.

He walks out the sliding doors, and there’s an immediate disparity between the stillness of the airport and the absolute chaos of the rest of the world. Or at least, the rest of the world that Yukhei can see. (And hear, because holy _ shit _what is that noise?) He stops in his tracks, because what the fuck else is he supposed to do when he sees a woman being thrown against the roof of a car not even a meter in front of him? Not to mention there’s a large pool of something that looks suspiciously like bodily fluid of some sort not too far off to the left. And also some guy bleeding out in the middle of the sidewalk with half his face ripped off. And -

Okay, point made. It’s a fucking mess out there, and Yukhei has no clue what is going on or why everyone’s suddenly lost their collective minds. He freezes for a split second as his fight or flight response kicks in. He chooses flight.

“Oh, fuck,” he breathes out as he spins on his heel and books it back into the airport, luggage long forgotten. He runs all the way back to a terminal - he has no idea which one - and frantically starts searching for one of those giant TV screens that hang on practically every wall. He finds one pretty quickly, since they’re everywhere, but all that shows on the display is a chart of flight statuses. They’re all delayed. Whatever’s happening out there clearly has more repercussions than Yukhei originally thought. 

He keeps going, making his way through the airport as quickly as he can, glancing at every screen that catches his eye. He only finds a couple more that show the flights are all delayed. The rest are blank, flickering between black and blue like someone’s cut the source. Yukhei doesn’t know enough about technology to know what would cause that on a mass scale, but after sprinting through four terminals he’s accepted his fate. He has no clue what the fuck is going on, and he’s trapped here until he finds out.

That’s not ideal, so he straightens up and brushes the hem of his hoodie against the sweat on his forehead, pushing his hair back out of his face. While he waits for his breathing to even out, he strolls back through the airport in a last ditch attempt to find someone who works there. Or he’d even settle for just another sane person. Surely he can’t be the only one who hasn’t lost their mind.

It takes another fifteen minutes, but eventually he does find a receptionist who is miraculously still at her desk. Maybe she hasn’t seen what’s going on outside, or maybe she’s stuck in here without answers just like Yukhei is. Doesn’t hurt to ask.

“Hey, excuse me,” Yukhei says in his best no-I’m-not-panicked-why-do-you-ask voice as he walks up to the desk. “Do you know what the local news station is?” He figures he can look it up on his phone, so he pulls it out of his pocket.

She doesn’t say anything, but Yukhei doesn’t look up from where he’s trying to pull up the internet browser. Nothing happens; the signal is jammed, maybe. Or maybe Seoul just has really shitty reception, Yukhei wouldn’t know. “Hello?” he asks after several more minutes of standing there awkwardly looking like a dumbass while he messes with his phone.

She still doesn’t say anything, but this time, she lunges forward, right at Yukhei’s face. He jumps back, dropping his phone in the process, but he barely has time to register what’s happening before she’s hurdling the desk like a fucking olympian and charging at him like a maniac. Yukhei backpedals, spinning around to race out of there like his life depends on it. Based on what he saw outside, it probably does.

The thing is, Yukhei’s wearing jeans. His favourite jeans, to be exact, but that’s beside the point. The point is, jeans have belt loops, and cabinets have handles. So when Yukhei takes a turn a little too sharply as he’s diving into one of those stupid airport candy stores, his belt loop gets caught and yanks him back, flat onto his ass. He’s so fucked.

Yukhei rushes to stand, but the receptionist is already there and she’s - what the fuck? She’s taking a _ bite _ out of his goddamn leg. Like, not a small one, either. She takes a huge chunk out, and when she straightens back up where she’s kneeling in front of him she’s got a whole mouthful of Yukhei. Gross.

“What the actual, literal fuck?” Yukhei blurts, because there really isn’t any other phrase that fully conveys the enormity of his bewilderment and disgust. “Did you just try to _ eat _me?!” he practically shrieks, like the receptionist will give him an answer. She just swallows the hunk of his leg she’d been chewing, and leans down for another.

Yukhei is slightly more prepared this time, so he kicks her in the face - hard - with his right foot. His left leg is still bleeding out, and the veins around the bite already look alarmingly purple and spidery, and he really doesn’t know what he’s gonna do about that since he can’t even leave the fucking airport but pretty much anything would be better than sitting here and letting this bitch eat him bite by bite.

He kicks her again, then stands up and hobbles away as quickly as his one good leg will take him. Which isn’t very fast at all, and god his leg is throbbing, but he’s afraid to stop moving just in case the receptionist (or anyone else, for that matter) is after him. Eventually, though, his leg gives out completely and he’s left crumpled in a heap on the tile in front of an airport bathroom because he’d been trying to hide but couldn’t quite make it there.

He lays there, motionless, for what he thinks might be forever. His leg isn’t bleeding anymore, which he’s pretty sure isn’t normal given the size and depth of the wound, but at least he doesn’t have to worry about laying in a puddle of his own blood. Seriously, he really likes these jeans, and he’s pissed enough that there’s a huge hole in them now. He doesn’t need his hoodie getting blood stains on it too.

After an eternity, he feels like he’s falling asleep, but he’s still totally aware of his surroundings. It’s a weird sensation; the pain in his leg is gone, but he can still feel the cold tile beneath him (why is it still cold if he’s been laying here this long?) and he’s acutely aware of every slight noise within his general vicinity. It’s like, some of his senses are heightened, but some are so dull he can’t even remember what it was like to experience them in the first place. Like pain. He can’t recall a single time he ever hurt in his life, now that the throbbing has stopped.

He’s forgotten good things, too. Like the sound of his mother’s voice, or his father’s face, or what his home looks like or how his favourite song makes him feel. It’s unnerving, like he can feel all this information he took for granted for so long just draining out of him, but he can’t register what’s missing till it’s already gone and he has no way to get it back.

At some point it hits him: he’s dying.

He’d always hoped death would be peaceful; and on some level, he guesses it is. It definitely looks like it is from the outside, anyway, like he’s just laying on the floor drifting off to sleep. And even though forgetting his entire life is disorienting, and stressful, he doesn’t seem to have the energy to act on those emotions. He feels muted versions of everything, like painting with watercolours where the ratio isn’t quite right, the colours a little too transparent and runny.

It’s funny how people say when someone dies, their life flashes before their eyes. It’s actually the opposite. They lose it all, one piece at a time, till there isn’t a life to flash before their eyes to begin with. It’s like Yukhei’s forgetting a dream he had after waking up; there’s an impression of what happened, what he felt, what it was all like, but no actual knowledge of the dream itself. It’s just...gone. And eventually, even the vague memories fade too.

Yukhei wakes up a day later with a bitter taste in his mouth and sandpaper in his throat. He can’t even talk, Jesus. He stands up, slowly, painstakingly slowly - for no apparent reason - and then shuffles off into the airport terminal. He sees one other guy stumbling down the corridor, so he walks up to him (Which is easier said than done. Why is his left leg so useless?) and tries to ask him - wait. What is he trying to ask him?

And, hold on. What the fuck is he doing in an airport?

**Author's Note:**

> pls forgive me if any of the actual travel stuff is inaccurate,, the last time i flew was back when i was 16 and i literally downloaded kakao taxi just to try and figure it out for this fic oof
> 
> anyway! i still have a few more parts planned for this au so stay tuned for that ayye
> 
> and as always if you wanna hmu on [twitter](https://twitter.com/mullethyuck) feel free to pester me about updating or shoot ideas my way!! or just cry about nct and/or zombies with me tbh


End file.
